Babysitting Duty
by theyre-my-babies
Summary: For Spyfest 2015, Week One prompt. Who babysat Alex before Jack Starbright? MI6 agents, of course.


A/N: YO, PEEPS. Back from vacay! Third entry for Spyfest 2015, Week One prompt:

"Pre-Stormbreaker. What was life like before Ian died?"

Disclaim.

*-ARARARARARARARAR-*

Babysitting Duty.

The newbies at MI6 hear whispers of it in the hallways. To them, it sounds like - punishment. Hazing. Mocking. They think that getting babysitting duty means you've screwed up bad. You made some dumb mistake and now you get to babysit like some short-on-cash teenager. None of the newbies wants babysitting duty.

Anyone who's been there awhile, though, knows that it's the opposite. Babysitting Duty is something close to the highest privilege. It's a badge you wear with pride: to babysit the child of John Rider.

Ian Rider is his legal guardian. Most of the time, or as often as he can, Rider keeps little Alex to himself. If he doesn't anticipate too much trouble on a mission - and if it's the kind where he can - Rider even takes Alex on missions with him. During those missions that Alex can't come with him, though, Ian leaves Alex with a bodyguard/babysitter who he has personally screened, background checked, worked with, and threatened within an inch of his/her/xir life.

Alex's favorite minders, after Ian, are Liv and Damian.

Liv is practically a kid still. She got recruited by MI6 straight out of university. The story is that in her first month at '6, she was filing papers for Smithers, who was in the labs, when an agent came on the radio. His mission had gone horribly wrong - he'd been given faulty information - and she'd gotten him out and safely back to London by herself without batting an eye. Ian knows the story is true, and trusts her, because he was that agent. Liv likes babysitting Alex because she gets to bring him toys. His favorite one so far is the broom-and-quaffle set she made just for him. The quaffle stays on the ground, and the broom is more of a combination scooter/tricycle than anything that flies, but Liv is quite proud of them.

Damian is somewhere between Ian's age and Liv's age. He came into '6 a few years after Ian, and nobody's really sure where he came from. Nobody except Ian, that is, because Ian's not going to let a Scorpia agent babysit Alex. Damian is not a Scorpia agent: he is Alan Blunt's son with Julia Rothman. Ian didn't like it until he listened in on the comms on one of Damian's missions and finds out that Damian's a snarky control freak of a punk kid, and afterwards when Ian talks to some less legal contacts and discovers that Damian was a Scorpia assassin for a long time until he faked his death (twice, and got away with it) and come to work for '6. Damian teaches Alex multiplication and division by his fourth birthday. Also he has a GPS tracker on Alex, and Ian likes checking it on his way back from missions.

Alex is seven when things change.

Ian's on his flight back to London from a mission in Cuba. Everything went as planned; he'll be back home right on schedule. And then he gets the call.

Alex is fine, is the first thing Crawley tells him.

Who's not, Ian asks.

There was an accident.

(It wasn't an accident.)

Liv and Damian were taking Alex home from karate. They were hit. The car was wrecked. So were Liv and Damian. Alex was inexplicably fine - the man who'd called the police had been playing football with Alex when the police got there, and then handed Alex over to them. The other car, the one who'd hit them, was nowhere to be found. Probably dumped at the bottom of a lake, Ian thought. Whoever the driver had been, the anonymous man who had taken care of Alex was likely blond, with cold, blue eyes, and almost feminine eyebrows.

After that, there was no more babysitting duty for MI6. Ian found a girl to be housekeeper/babysitter instead, a young American girl who was looking for a job. Jack Starbright had no connections to his world, and Alex liked her. She couldn't cook, but it didn't matter. She didn't need to. She just needed to take care of Alex, and she did.

Ian was pleased when he came back from a mission and found Alex and Jack reading or playing football or making a mess of the kitchen. Alex, Ian thought, was taking care of Jack as much as Jack took care of him. He never spoke about the accident, or how he'd survived, but he didn't want to lose Jack.

But, Ian supposes, a star that burns that bright isn't meant to last.

*-ARARARARARARARAR-*

A/N: Credit for the last line is Veronica Roth. Sort of? The original was "I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last." BUT i really, really had to make it 'star' because, yes, Jack Starbright. Also i have zero excuse for how late in the week last week i wrote and posted these, but i totally have an excuse for being a bit late this week because i hadn't even read any of Scorpia Rising until like a week ago or something and then, yeah, vacay + driving + whatevs + tiny little pdf words + dying battery. So. Finish it earlier today, wrestling with the fic right now. + see my prof for headcanons and stuff.


End file.
